It's about time

I should have gotten to this earlier in the week, but Michelle Wie finally won a professional golf tournament. It's something that the woman's sport really needs.

Wie takes Mexico event for 1st LPGA win

If she catches fire, there will be more fans (some of them male, and not just to watch her swing) on the links watching the women play.

In that vein, I have always wondered if the lesser attention paid to women's pro sports than men's pro sports is partly because of history. There is less long-term tradition for writers and fans to borrow from and think about. There are fewer hallowed records, like the 18 major tournament wins of Nicklaus that Tiger is shooting for, or all the (argh) World Series titles of the Yankees and the attendant tradition. The one pro sport that seems to get nearly the same respect for women as men is tennis -- and tennis has a long rich history in the women's game as well as the men's game. Women's golf has a fairly long rich history as well, but it's just not as well-known (and I think that women's golf has been mostly a North American/European affair until recently, rather than the more global extent of tennis). And perhaps I'm being parochial. But it's unfortunate that competitive and exciting women's pro sports like soccer, basketball, and golf struggle while the men's sports thrive. Women's college competition still does great (but unfortunately I think that is partly because it's hard and expensive to get tickets to the men's games at major colleges!)

Now, women's volleyball has always appealed to me, both for competitive and aesthetic reasons, and the beach game appears to do fairly well for pros, too. And if they had even more players like Gabrielle Reece and Francesca Piccinini, they're might be even more beer-fueled, red-blooded male fans of that game.

(Note about Francesca: searching finds more with less, caution abounds. Same goes for Gabs, though not at quite the same extent of exposure.)